Going to Beijing and Sanya

Leaving tomorrow, gone for two weeks. Stuffed suitcases with about 150lbs of nutritional supplements for wife's relatives. Feels like I'm boarding a time machine to the 1980's... who the heck brings back nutritional supplements to Beijing in this day and age? Well, I guess there's something to be said about being FDA approved... but then I'm not sure if nutritional supplements are. That, the perpetual smog, and the back to back banquets are making this trip seem rather bleak.

Well, Sanya should be a good break from all this snow. Spent around 6-7 hours shoveling last weekend. Just paid $115 for long term parking in a garage today, just can't leave my car parked in the usual places with all this snow.

Anyone know of of any (fairly recent) good games or WuXia series from the mainland worth picking up?

HK47: Now do you understand the travails of my existence master? Surely it does not compare to your existence but still...
You: I survive somehow
HK47: As do I. It is our lot in life I suppose master. Shall we find something to kill to cheer ourselves up?

Leaving tomorrow, gone for two weeks. Stuffed suitcases with about 150lbs of nutritional supplements for wife's relatives. Feels like I'm boarding a time machine to the 1980's... who the heck brings back nutritional supplements to Beijing in this day and age? Well, I guess there's something to be said about being FDA approved... but then I'm not sure if nutritional supplements are. That, the perpetual smog, and the back to back banquets are making this trip seem rather bleak.

i don't think it's just a china thing. when my friend visited me from korea, she went and stocked up on vitamins to bring home as well.

nytimes: Every hr you have 10 minutes where youre not doing anything productive at work, & you cant look at porn. So you make a comment & fulfill this desire to show yourself off as a smarty-pants.

talk about supplement, when i went to china, my parents bought like 30 cans of those one a day multi-vitamins from costco to bring back to china to my relatives... that shit took an entire luggage.

That's exactly where our stuff came from: Costco. It's like some sort of warped tradition. I think it was a mix of multivitamins, fish oil, coenzyme Q10, glucosamine and aspirin of all things.

Well, I'm back now in the US. It feels like waking up from a dream. The world just seems so different here now. The streets are empty at night, the sky is blue and I can see the horizon... weird.

Inflation has run rampant in China in the last couple of years. Before I could go back, and expect some cheap food and goods but now the prices are comparable to the US, and in some cases exceed that of the US. Property prices in Beijing have skyrocketed over the last 8 years or so such that some places have seen a 10x increase. Pretty soon I won't be able to afford a trip back to Beijing.

The cars on the road are pretty much all-new, and even with cars costing 2x-3x what they cost in the US, you still see a large number of Mercedes, BMWs and even a Lamborghini or two. Evidently to even register a car in Beijing you need to go through a lottery, and a large number of slots have been resold at something like 10K USD per permit. This means if you're wealthy you can easily buy a permit, and if you're not you can make some good cash by selling one. I guess there's also the population to factor in. Even if only 10% are wealthy enough to own cars at these inflated prices, that's still a sizable number given a total population of 20 Million or so in Beijing.

Smoking also was a major difference in Beijing. Unlike the US, smoking is still allowed in public places, and I've been offered cigarettes at least 5-6 times during the time that I was there. A couple of days into it I actually considered accepting since I had picked so much second hand smoke by that time

Pollution is probably as bad as reported. I have this picture that I took at 10am in the morning of the skyline. There's a dimly glowing ball of light in the sky that looks like the moon... but it's actually the sun. I was so weirded out by it when I first saw it because it's not very often you can look at the sun in the day time without protection. Clouds can block the sun but it takes a thick uniform haze to generate the effect that I saw. I had bought a hepa air filter before I left for China but it was large, and didn't support 220v so I left it at home.

On one hand I envy the rapid progress made in the last couple of years there as opposed to the relatively stagnant US. On the other hand it seems like the "Wild West" where unless you can wheel and deal, you'll often be left holding the short end of the stick.

Oh, I came up empty in terms of games of wuxia series. It looks like wuxia TV series have fallen out of favor in the last couple of years, and most games over there are MMOs.

HK47: Now do you understand the travails of my existence master? Surely it does not compare to your existence but still...
You: I survive somehow
HK47: As do I. It is our lot in life I suppose master. Shall we find something to kill to cheer ourselves up?

That's exactly where our stuff came from: Costco. It's like some sort of warped tradition. I think it was a mix of multivitamins, fish oil, coenzyme Q10, glucosamine and aspirin of all things.

Well, I'm back now in the US. It feels like waking up from a dream. The world just seems so different here now. The streets are empty at night, the sky is blue and I can see the horizon... weird.

Inflation has run rampant in China in the last couple of years. Before I could go back, and expect some cheap food and goods but now the prices are comparable to the US, and in some cases exceed that of the US. Property prices in Beijing have skyrocketed over the last 8 years or so such that some places have seen a 10x increase. Pretty soon I won't be able to afford a trip back to Beijing.

The cars on the road are pretty much all-new, and even with cars costing 2x-3x what they cost in the US, you still see a large number of Mercedes, BMWs and even a Lamborghini or two. Evidently to even register a car in Beijing you need to go through a lottery, and a large number of slots have been resold at something like 10K USD per permit. This means if you're wealthy you can easily buy a permit, and if you're not you can make some good cash by selling one. I guess there's also the population to factor in. Even if only 10% are wealthy enough to own cars at these inflated prices, that's still a sizable number given a total population of 20 Million or so in Beijing.

Smoking also was a major difference in Beijing. Unlike the US, smoking is still allowed in public places, and I've been offered cigarettes at least 5-6 times during the time that I was there. A couple of days into it I actually considered accepting since I had picked so much second hand smoke by that time

Pollution is probably as bad as reported. I have this picture that I took at 10am in the morning of the skyline. There's a dimly glowing ball of light in the sky that looks like the moon... but it's actually the sun. I was so weirded out by it when I first saw it because it's not very often you can look at the sun in the day time without protection. Clouds can block the sun but it takes a thick uniform haze to generate the effect that I saw. I had bought a hepa air filter before I left for China but it was large, and didn't support 220v so I left it at home.

On one hand I envy the rapid progress made in the last couple of years there as opposed to the relatively stagnant US. On the other hand it seems like the "Wild West" where unless you can wheel and deal, you'll often be left holding the short end of the stick.

Oh, I came up empty in terms of games of wuxia series. It looks like wuxia TV series have fallen out of favor in the last couple of years, and most games over there are MMOs.

Also wanted to point out that banks in Beijing sell gold and silver bars cast into yuan bao shapes in both solid and non-solid forms (presumably filled with some other metal rather than being hollow). I was tempted to buy a silver yuan bao but they didn't have them in stock. The prices were also quoted in grams instead of troy ounces so I didn't really know where the prices were close to spot or not without access to the net.

Now that I'm back in the the US I've been wondering if I should buy some silver bars. I almost bought some some years back when silver was still $12/oz, and now they're at $29/oz. Not sure if it's overvalued now or not but inflation over in China is scary. The interest rate in a savings account over is around 3% but the high inflation rate probably offsets that (your 3% interest doesn't amount to much if the cost of goods doubles every few years). My guess the common availability of gold and silver for sale might be there to hedge against inflation.

Maybe I should dollar cost average my way into a silver position since I'm terribly at market timing. Unfortunately it's cheaper to buy precious metals in bulk -at least for physical delivery so I'm not sure how well that will work.

HK47: Now do you understand the travails of my existence master? Surely it does not compare to your existence but still...
You: I survive somehow
HK47: As do I. It is our lot in life I suppose master. Shall we find something to kill to cheer ourselves up?

That's exactly where our stuff came from: Costco. It's like some sort of warped tradition. I think it was a mix of multivitamins, fish oil, coenzyme Q10, glucosamine and aspirin of all things.

Well, I'm back now in the US. It feels like waking up from a dream. The world just seems so different here now. The streets are empty at night, the sky is blue and I can see the horizon... weird.

Inflation has run rampant in China in the last couple of years. Before I could go back, and expect some cheap food and goods but now the prices are comparable to the US, and in some cases exceed that of the US. Property prices in Beijing have skyrocketed over the last 8 years or so such that some places have seen a 10x increase. Pretty soon I won't be able to afford a trip back to Beijing.

The cars on the road are pretty much all-new, and even with cars costing 2x-3x what they cost in the US, you still see a large number of Mercedes, BMWs and even a Lamborghini or two. Evidently to even register a car in Beijing you need to go through a lottery, and a large number of slots have been resold at something like 10K USD per permit. This means if you're wealthy you can easily buy a permit, and if you're not you can make some good cash by selling one. I guess there's also the population to factor in. Even if only 10% are wealthy enough to own cars at these inflated prices, that's still a sizable number given a total population of 20 Million or so in Beijing.

Smoking also was a major difference in Beijing. Unlike the US, smoking is still allowed in public places, and I've been offered cigarettes at least 5-6 times during the time that I was there. A couple of days into it I actually considered accepting since I had picked so much second hand smoke by that time

Pollution is probably as bad as reported. I have this picture that I took at 10am in the morning of the skyline. There's a dimly glowing ball of light in the sky that looks like the moon... but it's actually the sun. I was so weirded out by it when I first saw it because it's not very often you can look at the sun in the day time without protection. Clouds can block the sun but it takes a thick uniform haze to generate the effect that I saw. I had bought a hepa air filter before I left for China but it was large, and didn't support 220v so I left it at home.

On one hand I envy the rapid progress made in the last couple of years there as opposed to the relatively stagnant US. On the other hand it seems like the "Wild West" where unless you can wheel and deal, you'll often be left holding the short end of the stick.

Oh, I came up empty in terms of games of wuxia series. It looks like wuxia TV series have fallen out of favor in the last couple of years, and most games over there are MMOs.

darkcser, that is the new China. When my family visit our relatives in Shantou, Guangdong last year, things are pretty much like you described. Price of most stuffs are similar to here in Canada but salary is very low. Pollution is skyrocketed so naturally people have a lot of sickness but there is no free health care for them. Things won't get better but worse because factories are continue dumping industrial wastes into lakes and rivers. The next generation will be in big trouble. When I ask my cousins, who are in there 50s or 60s, about it they said the current generation is harvesting the grain of the future generations. Most Chinese, except the rich, acknowledges future is dim for them as they will have to live with very harsh environment. I would say pretty much all average Chinese would leave China for countries like Canada/US if there is an opportunity for them.

darkcser, that is the new China. When my family visit our relatives in Shantou, Guangdong last year, things are pretty much like you described. Price of most stuffs are similar to here in Canada but salary is very low. Pollution is skyrocketed so naturally people have a lot of sickness but there is no free health care for them. Things won't get better but worse because factories are continue dumping industrial wastes into lakes and rivers. The next generation will be in big trouble. When I ask my cousins, who are in there 50s or 60s, about it they said the current generation is harvesting the grain of the future generations. Most Chinese, except the rich, acknowledges future is dim for them as they will have to live with very harsh environment. I would say pretty much all average Chinese would leave China for countries like Canada/US if there is an opportunity for them.

I was listening to NPR (National Public Radio) the other day, and they had a piece on an advertisement for tourism in the Fujian province (?) citing how clean the air was. It had comments from folks from Beijing expressing how great it was compared to Beijing... What was amazing was that Fujian was still dirtier than the most-polluted day on record in LA. The article below has an interesting smog simulator app.

It's been kind of cold and clear here in the last couple of days, and I still find myself kind of freaked out by how supernaturally clear everything seems -especially at night.

HK47: Now do you understand the travails of my existence master? Surely it does not compare to your existence but still...
You: I survive somehow
HK47: As do I. It is our lot in life I suppose master. Shall we find something to kill to cheer ourselves up?

From the picture, Fujian is pretty clean if you compare to my father hometown village which is beside Guiyu. Guiyu is the world largest ewaste recycling site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_waste_in_Guiyu whereas my father hometown has ton of factories that dump all the industrial wastes into the rivers and lakes. The water in the lakes and rivers is black, the air is full of smog and stink. We stayed there for 2 weeks and there is not a single day of blue sky. Even underground water is so polluted that is not usable. They have the pipeline to get water from elsewhere. With the environment like this, there is no doubt that the future generation from my father hometown and Guiyu will get a lot of sickness. This is the image of Guiyu https://www.google.ca/search?q=guiyu...w=1344&bih=759